A Study of Some Acid-Fast Actinomycetes from Soil with Special Reference to Pathogenicity for Animals

Some of the actinomycetes, a small minority of the group, are acid-fast. The degree of acid-fastness, however, varies greatly from forms that are almost as acid-fast as tubercle bacilli to others that are only slightly more resistant to decolorization than ordinary bacteria. It is not uncommon, in cultures as well as in tissues, to see some elements that are distinctly acid-fast and others that are not, and filaments in which only portions are acid-fast. Some have referred to these lessened degrees of resistance to decolorization as semi-acid-fastness or partial acid-fastness. Acid-fastness in a filamentous organism was first described by Nocard1 in 1888, in Actinomyces farcinica, the cause of farcin du boeuf, or bovine farcy. Later, in 1890, Eppinger2 found a similar organism, Act. asteroides, in a human infection. Since that time occasional reports of the finding of the same or similar organisms in human and animal infections have appeared. In 1921 Henrici and Gardner3 reviewed the papers that had appeared up to that time, and described another human infection with a species which they designated Act. gypsoides. Davis and Garcia,4 in 1923, studied an organism very similar to, if not identical with, that of Henrici and Gardner, which had been isolated from an abscess developing from the prick of a cactus thorn. In 1930, Sartory, Meyer, and Meyer5 isolated an organism which resembled Eppinger's Act. asteroides from a human bone infection. Bishop and Fenstermacher6 in 1933 isolated this species from the tissues of a cow that was suffering from a generalized infection. In 1925 Sanford and Voelker7 collected case reports of human actinomycosis in the United States. Of the 670 cases reviewed by them about 10 were due to acid-fast species. With a few exceptions, all cultures of acid-fast actinomycetes of which we have found a record, have originated in human or animal infections. These exceptions are: